I had a fun exchange with Laurie from Punk Rock HR yesterday about the scientific validity of psychology in the workplace. She is of the belief that psychology is pseudoscience and has at best a limited contribution to the workplace. Since I have spent the better part of my adult life studying the science of organizations, I thought it was important for me to express my disagreement. As luck would have it, this good-matured ribbing has blossomed into a full-fledged discussion (yay!). Rather than clutter Laurie’s blog with a huge comment, I will collect my thoughts on the matter here.
I will be the first to admit there is a lot of junk out there for HR practitioners to sift through. Plenty of consultants make their living peddling less than proven techniques for improving organizational communication, sales effectiveness, leadership, etc. A single trip to Barnes and Noble can overwhelm the conscientious professional with the sheer volume of work on organizational life. How do we tease apart the good stuff from the not-so-good stuff? It is a hard thing to do; I don’t even try anymore; I avoid the “psychology” section of all commercial bookstores like I avoid germ-ridden co-workers (you know who you are).
It is also important for psychologists to recognize that much of our history was less than scientific. When non-psychologists think of psychology, images of Freud, Jung and other popular psychoanalytic principles jump to mind. These individuals, for all their contributions to psychology were not scientists. Sadly, plenty of scientists have fixed the study of human thought and behavior since then, but we tend to be less interesting than someone assuring us that we have amorous intent toward our parents.
How is Psychology a Science?
Modern psychology is a science because its adherence to the scientific method. It is the same scientific method that has led to advances in physics, chemistry, medical science, and all other fields of human endeavor that are regarded as “sciency” by the public. Without getting too technical, the distinguishing characteristics of science are testing, theory building, hypothesis generation and replication. All humans observe the world around them and develop stories or theories about how it works. Sometimes those explanations involve wood nymphs, witches or vast right-wing conspiracies. What distinguishes science in general and psychology specifically is the testing of such theories. From theory, we develop specific, testable hypotheses. If we cannot develop testable hypotheses from a theory, it is near useless in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. Additionally, it is important that results of hypothesis testing be replicated by other researchers; if it only happened once, it never really happened.
This is exactly what occurs in many fields of psychology. Certainly it happens in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Social Psychology (my areas of training or expertise depending on who you ask). I am not an expert in all psychological disciplines, but I am fortunate enough to know plenty of people who are experts in their fields. As a result, I can attest that this approach is also used by neuropsychologists, clinical, developmental, cognitive, and experimental psychologists.
What about Organizational Science Specifically?
What scientific advances have psychologists made with regards to the workplace? Hundreds of peer-reviewed, scientific articles are published every year, each with a “nugget” of knowledge about organizational behavior. Here are a few scholarly outlets for the curious and the brave:
- Journal of Applied Psychology
- Personnel Psychology
- Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
- Journal of Business and Psychology
- Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice
- Journal of Organizational Behavior
- Current Directions in Psychological Science
- Psychological Bulletin
- Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
- Social Cognition
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
I am acutely aware of these contributions; for many years I had to read a huge chunk of them. Seriously, my fellow graduate student and I had to read a GINORMOUS chunk of these. For a while I even, I even served as Managing Editor for the Journal of Business and Psychology (it was equal parts painful and educational).
More important than asking what we learned about humans in organizations is what have we learned that real people can use. This question is much more difficult to answer. Our volume of work is so large and in most cases so technical that it is inaccessible to the people we are trying to reach. Here are a few things we have learned that matter to practitioners (this is not a comprehensive list, it is only stuff I can remember before Laurie finishes her beat down on me).
- Employee attitudes matter
- Employee attitudes lead to employee behaviors, which in turn lead to organizational performance.
- Organizations that do not care about employee attitudes do not care about organizational performance by extension.
- Quality leadership contributes to organizational performance.
- Leadership can be taught, it is not an immutable trait, though it may come easier to some.
- The most effective leaders use a combination of transformational and transactional leadership approaches.
- Personnel selection tools are not created equal.
- Personal interviews (particularly the unstructured) have virtually no mathematical relationship with employee performance. And everyone thinks they are the exception to this rule- yes, you too!
- Cognitive ability measures, despite their several (and non-trivial) flaws are the best selection tool that we know of. Scores on these tests predict employee performance better than just about anything else.
The Dust Settles
I am pretty sure that I have not convinced Laurie of the accuracy of my position; I have also studied the science of persuasion/attitude change and it is not as easy as typing out a few words. Thankfully, persuasion was not my intent. We must have dialogue before real persuasion happens and on this count, I suspect my morning of writing has mattered. At least I hope so, because my client’s data will not analyze itself.
Part of the reason that people still think of psychologists as old guys with beards, pipes and couches is because we have not done a good job of popularizing our discipline. We have no Einstein, Sagan, or Hawking to capture the public imagination and explain what we do (Elizabeth Loftus and Robert Cialdini have made some strides here). Too many of us are stuck in a lab, or in a sales meeting to be the advocates we so desperately need. This is why discussions like these are so important and why I am so thankful that Punk Rock HR has gifted me with this opportunity to explain who we are and what we do.
If you disagree with me, let me know! If you agree with me, let me know too!
Update: Here’s a follow up post continuing the discussion on how Psychology is a Science.
You completed certain fine points there. I did a search on the matter and found a good number of persons will go along with with your blog.
psychology is the scientific study of behavior of individuals and mental processes.To a larger extent psychology is a science and to a smaller extent its not anexact science due to many reasons which you have mentioned above.thank you for your cooperation.
I think this is a beautiful site. It has tons of good information. This was very useful for me to use in my debate for psychology being a science.
We all know that psych is a social science however my assistant principal/director told me that its not counted as a science…I need to some how provide proof that Psychology is considered a science by New york state, so as to receove credit for it as a science. Could anyone perhapos help me to do so…? I really need to know asap,and if anyone here can help,it would be greatly appreciated. For example how can it be proven/what can i do to findout,to whom do i turn… Stuff along those lines. please!!! =’[
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It’s up! http://blog.iorgpsych.com/2009/04/i-can-read-your-mind-and-other-i-o.html
Eva! I am glad you found the value in this post. Given the response this topic gathered in Punk Rock HR, I may have to revisit this topic sooner rather than later. If you beat me to the punch, let me know. I would love to read it.
I think that in your hurry to refute beyond a doubt Laurie’s assertion that psychology was not a science, you didn’t address her main gripe. Psychology might be a science for the reasons you state. “psychology” as practiced in workplaces around the world is more like throwing darts after a few beers at Fast Eddie’s.
Now, I/O Psychologists (notice the big “P”) expect to come into a company and consult and teach HR people how to manage people using metrics and complex methodology in a few easy lessons (by coincidence the number of lessons always equals the number digits in the total amount they are going to charge the company) what took the IO/P’s years to learn. The expectation is for HR to become psychologists (notice small “p”), scientific method and all, turn around apply everything they learned to their corporate environment and make the company a better workplace. That, as Laurie stated, is the cookie-cutter approach employed today in companies everywhere.
The IO/P leaves and the HRs run around taking surveys and personality tests. When they are all done collecting data, they give themselves a big pat in the back and run to show their CEO’s the big stack of numbers they collected. After two weeks of that, those numbers might end up in the bottom of a cabinet collecting dust never to be seen again (if the employees are lucky) otherwise they become the basis of some hare-brained idea to increase productivity by “stimulating” employees usually with more work and less pay all while under duress that there might be cuts because the expense of hiring the consultant almost bankrupted the company. (oops!) SixSigma is the perfect example of this bastardization of science for the purposes of business. Not that there’s anything wrong with using science to make business decisions. It’s just wrong to sell a solution, label it as scientific and let morons apply it as if they were scientists just because they earned a fancy colored belt.
In no way am I dissing psychology (not this time anyway). After all, as you know, I have a great respect for all things related to philosophy
. It is in fact that I only question it’s application in the workplace and, more broadly, in society by the uninitiated (mainly HRs and middle management).
In my not so humble opinion, IO/P is part of a bigger trend to globalize and dehumanize the workforce to such an extent that their contributions are dictated by some “magical” formula. What you and your colleagues practice might be science (after all, all of you together agree and publish it every change you get). What HRs do with it, isn’t!
BTW, notice how the examples you give of good scientific “cheerleaders” are all from sciences that have something concrete to show the world. E=mc^2, Cosmos and A Brief History of Time stand on their own but on top of hundreds of years of other works. Some of those completely right others no so much so. However, so called “Modern Psychology” disowns all that that came before it from Jung and Freud all the way to the Greeks (Yes, I am talking about what we now call philosophy!). All that only because they forgot to show their work!? Psychology is by no means a new science. Modern Psychology is… And I/O is a baby in comparison. If you keep going like that, the “New Super Duper Modern Psychology” of tomorrow will end up disowning you too.
LOVE this post! Very comprehensive and accurate coverage. Happy to see this. I had this topic on my to-do list but I think I’ll just cross it off and link to yours when I expand on it one day.
Thanks for you comment Puff. Your beefs are legitimate and I am glad to address them.
You are right on about quasi-sciences having peer reviewed journals. That’s not a really good metric for assessing the scientific value of a piece of work. Peer review is only as good as the reviewers. Having said that, the journals I listed is chock full of reviewers that are highly trained scientists. It is tough to push a questionable piece through their defense; I know people that have tried it and I also know people that have caught them =)
What this boils down to, sadly, is that only an expert in the field has the knowledge and expertise to evaluate the legitimacy of a journal. I know this is not helpful to most of humanity. However, to be fair, the same can be said for Chemistry, Physics, Biology and many other sciences. I am not an expert on plate tectonics, organic chemistry, or particle physics; I am not capable of making a truly educated decision about what is good science in their fields. Having said that, my limited knowledge of these disciplines does not mean that they are not legitimate sciences.
You also raise a legitimate point about replication. This can get pretty technical, but replication in psychology involves finding the same pattern of data across many different individuals. For example, if I find evidence that a psychological construct like extroversion predicts the number of sales calls an individual makes, then other people should find the same thing with the same measure of extroversion, but with other individuals.
You are also right that human behavior is influenced by a huge number of different variables. This is part of the reason that psychology has to be probabilistic. We don’t know how many different variables can influence any specific behavior. The best we can do is estimate the probability that a specific variable predicts specific behaviors. If this is disheartening (and it can be at times), again take solace in that many other sciences are also probabilistic in nature. In chemistry, we do not know that a given molecule will react with any other molecule, but we do know that in a given reaction a certain number of these molecules will behave in certain ways. The same can be said for material science and medicine.
You aren’t of base, Puff. You are astute to point these limitations out. The uncertainty surrounding the pursuit of knowledge is such that we constantly have to qualify our claims. Enhanced engagement may lead to increased organizational performance. Lipitor may lead to a decrease in cholesterol. Beware of the consultant selling you an absolute!
By the way, I need to put you on my blogroll. I like your comments on Punk Rock HR.
Dude, Puf is one of the naysayers. I love your response, it is intelligent and thought out, but (you had to know that was coming) here are my beefs. There are lots of quasi-sciences that have publications and do there own form of peer review (google UFO, bigfoot, etc), so I’m not fully buying that as a criteria. Also, I’m concerned with the aspect of replication. When dealing with human subjects in an environement where they are being measured on how they interact with other human subjects, you’ve created a situation with to many variables to measure, and a nearly mathimatical impossible scenario to accurately repeat.
It seems to me that psychology is still based on educated assumptions, and probability.
If I’m off base tell me. This is an area I enjoy exploring.